You're saying it as somehow "subjective" is bad. Of course it's subjective, and the whole point it a lot of modern art is subjectively perceived by most people as ugly, while being praised and promoted by "experts".
Why not both? If we, collectively, perceive most of things surrounding us as ugly, then we, collectively, can feel like we live in ugly times, even though there's no objective measure of ugly. While feelings are subjective, their prevalence can be objectively seen and argued about.
Imagine instead the headline were "we live in frightening times", and described how a lot of people fear what's going on around. Fear is not objective - it's an inherently a subjective feeling. But the number of people feeling afraid can be studied (e.g. by polls, or other sociological means) and if it's high, the argument can be made that it is the "frightening times". And definitely there's ample precedent of using "frightening times" in the headlines. So why not "ugly times"?
I didn't mean that subjective is bad, but the way the article is written makes it sound like the author thinks there can be an objective view of what constitutes a good aesthetic. Also, I'm not sure I agree that "most" people think modern art is ugly. Haven't seen any statistics to indicate that.
